


An Element of Blank

by calapine



Category: Doctor Who, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:23:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23496013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calapine/pseuds/calapine
Summary: Wormholes, pubs, darts, and a big fight scene. (Written for the 2005 Multiverse challenge.)
Relationships: Ninth Doctor & Jadzia Dax
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	An Element of Blank

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2005 for the 2005 Multiverse challenge.

_i. somewhere between time and space_

"Hello," he says when O'Brien transports him onto the bridge of the Defiant. He's not surprised, just not too happy. "I'm the Doctor, and you people have a few things to learn about manners."

"I'm Captain Benjamin Sisko of the ..."

"Yeah, that's nice," interrupts the Doctor. "Now if you could just put me back where you found me, that'd be great."

His eyes widen slightly when nothing happens. "Anytime you like," he adds.

"I'm afraid that's not possible." He's not pleased, this Captain, but he's not unreasonable. The Doctor wonders if the self-righteous aliens below have been speaking to him between the moments.

The Doctor sighs, folding his arms. "And why not?"

"We've been unable to send ships through the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant for three days now. Whatever you've been doing in here, it has to stop. Now."

"Wormhole?" The Doctor frowns.

"And you have some explaining to do." The Doctor opens his mouth. "Not here. Dax, set a course back to the station"? orders Sisko, returning to his chair.

"Wait!" A friendly expression suddenly appears on the Doctor's face. "There's something of mine out there - down there - with them. It's not very big. A blue box, about six feet tall. With a lamp on top. It's my ship. Very inoffensive, no weapons at all. Would you mind ...?"

Sisko glances at O'Brien, who gives a quick nod. "Transport it aboard," orders Sisko.

The Doctor grins, and slips into an empty chair on the bridge, somehow managing to fit into the background.

Around him, the air is humming.

_ii. times past_

"The wormhole fluctuations stopped some hours ago."

"Yeah, they would. I guess your little aliens have calmed down now." His eyes flick around the cell. "Remind me again what I'm charged with."

"There were massive amount of chronoton particles being emitted within the wormhole. In a higher concentration than I've ever seen before." The Doctor's face remains impassive as Dax speaks. "We know the aliens have the ability to change the timeline." A muscle in the Doctor's face twitches but his eyes don't leave hers. "That's what you were trying to do," she guesses. "But why?"

The Doctor blinks, his shoulders slump forward. Just a little; just enough. "You'd never believe me."

"Try me," insists Dax.

Odo releases him when Sisko decides there's been no real harm done. After all, Starfleet officers might be subject to temporal regulations, but attempted interference with the established time-line hasn't yet made it into the Federation statute books.

Dax arranges quarters for him, and he asks her to look after the blue box.

_iii. down the pub_

Dax exchanges a glance with Quark as she enters his bar and he gives a quick nod at the upper level.

He's sitting alone, his black leather coat letting him blend into the shadows. She sits without being invited.

"Don't you ever get tired of being curious?" he asks her.

"That wouldn't be much fun."

"How d'you know?"

She pauses, thinking back. "I remember being more introspective, once."

"What happened?"

"New host, new personality."

His head jerks up, and a curious expression of pain passes over his features. "What do you mean?" he asks softly.

"I'm a Trill. And I'm the eighth host of my symbiont. We're a symbiotic species."

"I thought it was a tattoo." He touches his temple lightly.

"And you look human, but the transporter trace disagrees."

"What does it say?"

'It can't identify your species.'

He smiles, satisfied, and takes a drink. He's quiet for a moment, and then leans back, stretching his muscles. "Why are you out here, Commander Dax?"

"I'm the station's science..."

But the Doctor shakes his head. "No, why are you out here?"

She thinks, not properly. But it's not quite a stock answer, "None of my other hosts had ever been in Starfleet. I wanted to try something new, something different."

The Doctor nods, looks away. Thinking of another time. "I tried something different, not very long ago. It didn't go very well."

"The wormhole aliens?" she asks, but he shakes his head.

"That could have gone better, but no - I'm a traveller, usually. But last time I went home, I couldn't really leave again. Got involved in something I'd rather have left well alone."

"I've done a few things I regret myself, across the centuries." She pauses, pretending that she's thinking of some of Kurzon's more dubious adventures, but it's Joran's face that's in her mind's eye.

"How old are you, Commander Dax?"

"Over three hundred." She leans forward, a conspirator. "How old are you?"

He smiles, and she smiles back, suddenly seeing the man hiding under the leather jacket.

_iv. the big fight scene_

"Daleks."

"Never heard of them," Dax says swinging her bat'leth up to catch his. He withdraws and strikes out again, but she parries easily. His footwork's perfect, but he's using cutting styles no Klingon would ever approve of.

He grins, the same smile as before, but it brings no comfort this time. "That's because they don't exist anymore. They never existed. I wiped them all out."

He's mad, she realises. And she should leave, and call Julian. But he swings the bat'leth with an easy grace, and his movements are too vicious and too certain for someone who is not used to fighting for his life.

She's seen angry before, and this one is just as angry at himself as the rest of the universe. Suddenly, she's afraid he'll make a mistake, deliberately let her strike a killing blow.

She drops her guard, and he swings his weapon up. The blade stops millimetres from her throat.

The Doctor looks her in the eyes as he hold the blade at her jugular, and sees himself, tiny and blue, staring back.

She could understand, and she does, a little. Seeing the world change around her and still being here, being forced to move on. Letting friends go and finding the strength to trust new ones, knowing that they too will leave in time.

Cutting ties.

Being alone.

He can see her linear line, twisting back through time, and perhaps that's where he went wrong. Perhaps he should have made a home somewhere, somewhen.

"Are you afraid to die?" he asks her. The blade doesn't move, and she hides her fear beneath a fierce determination.

"I've done it before."

He drops the weapon. "Doesn't mean it gets any easier."

"Who are you?" she asks.

"Doesn't matter," he says, sinking back against the wall and sliding to the ground. "The way things go for me I'll only have a couple of hundred years left anyway."

"That's a long time," she says.

The Doctor laughs. Short, harsh. "There are Time Lords who've not even regenerated once in the time it's taken me to reach my ninth life." A smile twists his lips. "Except there aren't anymore, cause I'm the last one left, so it really didn't matter at all in the end."

She sits next to him on the sand. Two old warriors.

All they need is a bottle of whisky.

_v. a happy beginning_

"What is that?" asks the Doctor.

"A dartboard. Darts," O'Brien tells him. "It's a game," he adds, remembering that the Doctor's an alien.

"I know what darts is." He slides off the barstool and walks up to the board till it was almost touching his nose. Bashir and O'Brien exchange a glance, and the Doctor swings round to fix them with an accusing stare. "What're all those shiny lights for? And why does it make that silly noise?" He shakes his head, not bothering to wait for a reply. "Humans. You think up a perfectly good idea then have to keep fiddling with it until it becomes a parody of itself. Darts are meant for pubs. And this is not a pub."

"Oh, then where do you play darts?" asks O'Brien, slightly irritated.

"Well," says the Doctor. "I know this nice little place in Ireland..."

"I could find a pub blind-folded in Ireland," says O'Brien with a roll of his eyes.

"What? Now? Don't think so. They've gone all clinical and precise. No personality at all." The Doctor smiles and leans forward to whisper. "I could take you to a real pub."

O'Brien takes that as a bet, of sorts, and Bashir is dragged to the cargo bay with them, though he manages to call Dax on the way.

"What's the problem?" she asks, beating them there.

"Not sure," murmurs Bashir. "But the Doctor seems to think we can go travelling in the blue box."

"Oh." Then she smiles, and doesn't bother explaining why.

No-one, save the Doctor, says anything when they go into the box. He calls it a TARDIS and uses the phrase 'dimensionally transcendental' without a trace of irony.

"Here we go," he announces as the central rotor stops moving. "Ireland. The south bit. In the seventies. Out you go!"

"Temporal prime directive," murmurs Bashir as they step out of the TARDIS, but O'Brien just gives him a look and orders four pints of Guinness at the bar.

The Doctor follows them, with Dax at his side. She coughs a bit at the smoke and looks around with a tourist's eyes.

And she smiles just a little, and quite suddenly the Doctor remembers who he is.


End file.
